Edison's leading light
A FRIEND of mine has made enough money out of education to own a runner in the Derby, so it can be a good business. Benno Schmidt thinks so, too. He gave up running Yale to found Edison, which is now the biggest educational company in the United States. It runs schools, many of them in rough and run-down places, for the local school boards, under contract. Compared with the state system, it has put hours on the school day and weeks on the school year, pays its teachers 15 per cent more and is 9 per cent cheaper. (The money, so Mr Schmidt says, is spent in the classroom rather than in the back office.) No wonder that Edison is growing and that its share options — everybody, janitors included, gets them — are worth having. In London this week to give the Hayek Lecture for the Insti- tute of Economic Affairs, he pushed at a door which may be beginning to open. Already the schools in Leeds have been prised away from the failing grasp of the local education authority and will be run by a new company formed for the purpose. My friend would do well to negotiate for the Edison franchise.
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